I can't deny that public transport in Singapore is good and efficient and that the taxis are cheap, but after 8 months of towing my groceries home from the supermarket in a trolley, collecting children from playdates in out of they way locations by taxi and waiting at bus stops, the novelty finally wore off.
To be honest, there were a couple of incidents that speeded the process up, such as accidently running over my toes with a trolley full of food and cutting them quite painfully. However, the final straw was when a wheel fell off the trolley in the supermarket and my shopping bags were far too heavy to carry home. Fortunately, I found the bits on the floor and was able to fix it, but enough was enough.
After some research trying to find out what was a good car (make and age) to buy second hand (pre-owned as it's known here) to minimise our overall losses, we settled on something called a Toyota Vios. It's a medium sized, by UK standards, but small here, saloon (in red). It's wonderful. It's pleasant to drive and takes us where we want to go when we want to go there. It waits whilst I collect the children and brings my groceries home in the boot. Dealers were keen to sell us enormous vehicles - big seems to be best here, when it comes to cars, but I like to fit easily into parking spaces.
The whole research process was an adventure in itself. The system here bares no resemblance to buying a car in the UK, and dealers baffled me with COEs, OMVs, PARFs and depreciation rates. For instance, they would say "so on this car, the depreciation is $3,947.23 per year". I had to question such a precise figure - was that what we would loose in a year? "Ah no, that's the depreciation of from the COE to the PARF, what you loose depends on the market next year..." Eh?? It's all very complicated and I think we only ever partitially understood the whole thing, but went ahead anyway and the freedom is worth it - however much "it" turns out to be.
The downside of all this is that before we've been here a year, we need to convert our driving licences to Singaporean ones and this means sitting a theory exam at a driving school. I really thought we'd finished with driving tests, but the taste of freedom that we've experienced over the last few days will be the incentive to get this done.
When Adam realised we were talking about getting a car, he was devastated, and asked "does that mean we won't go on the train anymore?". We consoled him with assurances that there would still be odd occasions when it was easier/better to go somewhere by public transport.
Before actually collecting the car though, I did do something we'd been promising for a while. I took Adam round the whole circuit of the train line on our side of the island where it runs above ground. When I agreed to do this, I did envisage having a seat for all of the journey and not just the last half though! And then on the LRT (a small, computerised and driverless train). Adam loved sitting right at the front where he could see the points change on the track, but I'm quite glad we've done that and can tick it off the list. We also took a double decker bus from here that runs down Orchard Road (the main shopping street) to see the Christmas lights and managed to get the front seats upstairs.
Using our new car, we went to Junior/Senior school carol concert this week. As Adam was doing a recorder solo, we had to get there early. We had spent hours practising this and I was glad I could still remember how to play a recorder to help. However, the early arrival requirement was useful as parking was limited and we were fortunate to be one of the earlier families to arrive.
It was slightly odd going to a carol concert in a summer dress. With memories of large draughty churches in Britain and everyone dressing up in their warmest clothes to survive a Christmas concert, I asked Adam if the church was a bit cool. He said it wasn't too bad because there were fans. I can safely say it was the hottest Christmas carol concert we've ever been to. It's also the first time we've heard Oh Come All Ye Faithful sung in Japanese and The First Noel in Korean, and all in a church with open, glassless windows at the sides, ceiling fans and a congregation fanning themselves with the programmes to keep cool.
We used it again (the car, not the church) to go to Hannah's school Christmas play. It was lovely, a mixture of scenes to give different perspectives on Christmas. I had given up an afternoon to help make props, so we got seats near the front as a thank you - and then afterwards, instead of hanging around outside the school with a number of other families, waiting for a slightly illusive taxi (it's not the busiest road), we drove home...in our own car....no waiting around with tired children. Yippeee!!
Hannah made us laugh though, when she told me that the Three Wise Men took Gold, Myrrh and Frankenstein to the baby Jesus.
Term here has finished and it's back to Britain for Christmas in a few days and we're really looking forward to seeing people. However, we're nervous about the cold as, apparently, the December temperatures are under our current comfort threshold of 25 degrees. This bit, I can safely say, we are dreading - today is very cold here, only 23 degrees, and we're cold!
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